all that matters, branded on your arm
by Lady Shaye
Summary: "I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you." / He whispers in her ear, "I'll always protect you," even if it turns out to be a lie in the end. / She's all that matters.


A/N: I don't understand this. I planned maybe a 400 word fic at the most. What did I give you guys? Over three thousand words describing the bitterness and almosts-that-never-weres of Steroline. I'm a girl that loves to torture herself, what can I say.

Pairing: Steroline, a little Stelena at the end.

Rating: T

Summary: "I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you." / He whispers in her ear, "_I'll always protect you_," even if it turns out to be a lie in the end. / She's all that matters.

Disclaimer: Why do I even bother. Fucking disclaimed.

* * *

_all that matters, branded on your arm_

–The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, "Copper Down"

* * *

"I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you."

_She believes him._

* * *

And oh, how that hurts in the end.

* * *

Elena is a vampire and Bonnie is bitter. Damon is hurting and Klaus is angry. But then again, everyone is angry and bitter and hurting and heartless.

But none of that really matters at the moment because he's in Chicago. Scratching another name into the wall of the closet that hid his alcohol during Prohibition. Scratching the name of the person whose blood he never drank from, the person he didn't kill directly, but in a way, he's responsible. He's responsible because he made Damon allow her to live, when it might have been kinder to have let her die in the very beginning instead of in the end when it hurt so much more.

_Caroline Forbes._

He doesn't know her middle name, doesn't know her favorite color or her best memory, doesn't know her favorite blood type or secret hiding place, doesn't know who she ever loved the most, doesn't know what she would have chosen or if she even knew she was dying. Doesn't know if she died in pain or instantly, doesn't know if she did it happily to save Elena or crying because she wasn't ready to die, didn't want to go.

Somehow, all of that feels significant, all of the things he never knew about Caroline Forbes, the things he will never get to know.

* * *

The promise he made her was stupid in the end, because she was really probably the best of them all. Kind and forgiving and hopeful, she saw the best in everyone (even Klaus, and he doesn't know how the hell she managed that one) and forgot the worst (except with Damon, and who could blame her).

He promised to save her, to protect her, when in the end she was the one that had everything together and he was the one falling apart.

The apartment smells like dust and gin. (She smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, Damon said she tasted like cherries, she looked like an angelic devil, spoke like a saint with the sin dripping off her lips. The ultimate temptation, the divine tragedy.)

He tries not to remember—there are a thousand horrible memories in this little place, why can't he pick one involving the twenties and not _her_? Anything would be better than this—but the memories come to him as easily as she went to death.

_So easy, too easy. Why did she have to go?_

* * *

Her, childish and smiling, sort-of asking him out on his first day at school.

He turns her down because he's captivated by Katherine's lookalike, as of yet uneducated about the Petrova doppelgangers and twisted family trees and Originals and white ash stakes. He's torn between leaving Katherine's many-times great-granddaughter the hell alone and taking her into his arms and compelling her to love him (it's what Damon would probably do).

So he turns her down and tries not to notice his interest in the way her clothes halfway reveal curves and her hair bounces as she turns away and tries to not show her hurt. He doesn't even bother to wonder _why_ she's hurt.

Later, he figures out that it's because he turned her down that she was vulnerable and open in the Grille. It's because he turned her down that she was fresh meat for Damon, willing with a brightly-lit smile and a pretty face. It's because he turned her down that she even became a vampire, if you keep going down the list of bad situations that just got worse.

It's because of him that she dies, he supposes, but then, everything is his fault so he already knew that somewhere in what's left of his heart.

* * *

Her, sitting practically on Damon's lap in Elena's living room. Damon, smirking and compelling her to leave them the hell alone and go wash the dishes. (As if Caroline would ever wash dishes.)

Him, seething inside and not really knowing why. He can pretend that it's because he's the good guy and he knows compelling is wrong, but honestly, it's because seeing her used like a doll makes something inside of him rise up and long to break Damon's neck.

Instead, he settles for harsh words and Caroline's pretty compelled smile directed at his bastard of a brother.

* * *

Her, unconscious and head lolling, as he carries her in his arms.

It's the first time he's ever really looked at her, he supposes, but she seems pretty enough. She hardly weighs a thing in his arms. She looks much different from Elena and Katherine, with her curly blonde hair and eyes that are blue beneath her closed lids. Her skin is pale thanks to blood loss, and somewhere in the back of his mind he makes a note to let Damon take revenge on Logan Fell the next time Damon gets in one of his hurt-random-people-because-I'm-pissed moods.

She breathes shallowly and he almost worries but doesn't. She'll be fine. She's Elena's friend, so he won't let anything happen to her.

Her jaw slackens after she murmurs her mother's name—not _Mama _or _Mommy_, like you would expect after such a traumatic situation, but _Liz_, like she's speaking to a colleague or an acquaintance instead of her flesh-and-blood mother—and he feels the tiniest ounce of pity within him, given that he too never had a chance for a relationship with his mother, though his was halted by death and not by emotional distance.

After that, she is quiet and Elena demands to know how she is and he tells her the truth. _She's your friend, Elena. I won't let anything happen to her, I promise._

More promises about Caroline he can never keep.

* * *

Her, red-jawed and wet-eyed, crying so hard she'd be sick if she were human.

She's panicked and scared (of herself, of him, of Damon, of her memories, of everything) and sobbing. He tries to wash the blood away but she won't focus, won't stay still, won't let him. He knows this, knows her pain, knows her sorrow, knows her fear. He knows but all he can try to do is clean her up and calm her down.

She twists in his arms and faces him, pleading with him to help her. And he never could turn down a plea for help. He never could keep himself from saving girls never meant to be saved (like Elena, so close to drowning when he first met her).

He cleans her up and teaches her the basics for control and holds her in his arms, trying not to acknowledge her shudders as she silently cries because he knows she's tired of showing her weaknesses.

He makes that stupid promise he couldn't keep. He doesn't yet know the consequences—and the pain—that it will eventually bring both to her and to him.

* * *

Her, animal-loving and teasing, making him smile despite himself.

_It's different from your worried vampire look. Neither of which stray too far from your "Hey, it's Tuesday" look._

She's trying for control and succeeding pretty well so far, much better than him most of the time.

He tries not to notice the slight tension between them as he leans in closer to her. His t-shirt is stretched tightly across his chest and he knows that she knows it very well, but she's babbling on about Matt and swimming holes so he backs off and creates more space between them. Because he loves Elena. And because she loves Matt. And because two vampires struggling for control should never go with their instincts. It ends with blood and passion, too much of both.

No, instead he just teases her and lets her think of comebacks and tries to pretend that he feels nothing for her stronger than mentor-ly pride and friendship (instead of urges and desire and that comforting warmth she gives off, so simple and accepting like sunshine in the summer, everything just falling into place).

* * *

Them, sitting in a café and laughing, pretending that she's not pretending to have a serious situation in order to distract him from finding Elena.

_Always looking out for me_, she smiles.

_Always_, he wants to say, but he opts for the more serious, scolding, laughing one.

_Yeah. Well, you don't exactly make it very easy on me._ The less corny one—less sweet, less true (because she makes everything easier, so really it's a lie).

But it makes her smile anyway, even if always turns out to be a lie in the end because "always" stopped coming true and she died, expired, breathed her last, _left him_.

* * *

Her, screaming over the phone as some death-wish-fulfilling werewolf shoots her with wooden bullets.

"Hurt her again and you're dead." The words are cold and full of malice, and he almost doesn't believe it's him saying them, but then again…it's _Caroline_, so of course he means them.

Later, she tries to brush it off, to tell him she's fine. She adamantly claims she doesn't want him in the house. So he gets Bonnie and Elena to come over and help her. It's not the first time she's been tortured (give that trophy to his bastard of a brother, remember?) or the last, but it's certainly the one he's around in the aftermath to help her with. Even if it's just this once, he'll do his damn best to help her.

She cries in the arms of her best friends, much like she cried in his arms after she first turned, and he thinks that maybe he did something right by her for once.

That night, Elena and Bonnie are asleep and she's staring out her window. Because even though vampires do sleep, they don't need it as much as humans do, and she's had a long hard day and he suspects she'll probably have vivid, scary nightmares if she sleeps (that's what she fears, so she won't sleep tonight, and he knows that sensation all-too-well).

He shows up in the branches of the tree next to her window very suddenly. "Open up before I freeze out here," he mouths, and he sees her hold back a snicker behind the glass.

"It's not even cold out," she chides as she lets him in her bedroom. "Oh, how very _Twilight_-esque of you, Stefan."

He smiles. "What can I say. I'm one for the clichés."

"A vampire coming through your window at night is about as cliché as you can get these days," she teases. Her eyes are still red at the rims, but he ignores it and they talk all night long about Tyler and Lexi and school. She's half-asleep on his arm, both of them slumped in her bed, when he whispers in her ear _this will never happen again _and _I'll always protect you_ and _I'm always looking out for you_ and _you're never second best, Caroline, never_.

The words make her smile in her sleep, and he leaves before Elena and Bonnie can wake up and wonder why he's there. They don't understand the bond between him and Vampire Barbie. Hell, he doesn't even understand it himself.

* * *

Him, unable to meet her eyes as she tells him the hard truth, because Caroline's never been one for false pretenses or beating around the bush. "You don't know how to be around her."

It's shameful that he has to ask for help from the girl he mentored when she was an "insecure control freak" recently turned into a vampire, but he doesn't know who else to ask because, for all that almost _everyone _in this town is supernatural, he trusts pretty much only her and he trusts in her control and her promises.

(She doesn't break promises to him like he'll break his promise to her.)

"I won't let you lose control," she swears, and he believes her and meets her beautiful, truthful blue eyes, somehow innocent in the wake of all this destruction when she's seen and felt such horrors that you wouldn't understand how she keeps going every day (he knows he doesn't).

He believes her, as he should because _she_ doesn't break her promises, but she shouldn't have believed him that one night in the bathroom after she killed Bonnie's crush and called herself a monster (she doesn't know what a true monster is, she's never seen the Ripper and his victims before).

_I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you. _The words come to haunt him.

But she does.

* * *

The apartment is silent, as it usually is now, but he hears the giggles of two lovers racing up the stairs to their own room, probably hiding from other people to add passion to their secret romance. For some reason, it reminds him of her (everything reminds him of her) and he recalls her laughter, bright and uplifting. She could make anybody smile, even him during his darkest days.

His nails have been scratching nervously into his arm for a while now, an almost-silent background noise to accentuate his thinking (his memories of her, stilled images and clips of her voice, and nothing else but Caroline). He knew almost nothing about her, but the way they were around each other, you would think they knew everything about each other.

She could read him like a book, and he could see her for what she wanted to be.

After a moment, he hears a door slam downstairs below him and his brooding—probably the two lovers, having reached their room and commenced the ripping-the-clothes-off part of their stereotypical situation—and it brings him out of his reverie. The daydream snaps like a bubble being popped and he looks down at his arm: the arm that held her when she cried, the arm she fell asleep on, the arm that wrapped itself around her whenever she felt particularly sad or out of control.

His nails have scratched her name into his skin, from his wrist to his elbow in bright red bloody letters.

_Caroline._

After a moment, the blood stops welling up and the letters disappear. But it gives him an idea, something that might hurt or help, but he doesn't know the difference anymore so what the hell, why not.

* * *

"That's a nice one," the artist says when he walks in the door, nodding at the rose on his shoulder exposed by his white tank top.

He nods a thank-you and sits down, paying cash upfront as opposed to waiting for later. The artist sits down and begins to create.

Less than an hour later and he has eight beautiful letters stretched from his wrist to the inside of his left elbow, tattooed so that they can never disappear. He leaves after giving the guy a nice tip and wanders back to his apartment.

He's back to sitting in that secret closet, running his fingers across her name scratched into the wood of the closet and then tracing the same letters—first name—inked into his arm. A beautiful name, _Caroline_.

He whispers it just so that he can break the silence.

* * *

Elena doesn't question the tattoo when he returns home. She just takes him in her arms because she's feeling pain too—not quite the same pain as him, but definitely just as strong if not stronger—and she knows what it's like. She's lost so much and she's lost a friend now on top of all of that she's lost before. The distance between them is partially dissolved as they hold each other and try not to cry. He's been gone for weeks and they haven't talked about Caroline yet. They won't. They can't.

"I'll get a matching one," she promises, her voice muffled by his chest.

"No," he whispers into her ear. "No, I think…I think you should get one for Jenna. Or your parents."

This is one he should have for himself. Caroline's name on his arm should be something meaningful. It feels like if Elena did it, it would cheapen the emotion put into it. He knows that's not true, that those are just excuses he's making up because he's secretly so so so selfish and he wants to keep her, or at least her memory, for himself.

"Okay," Elena acquiesces without another word, and a week later she gets Jenna's name on her shoulder.

* * *

Girls walk up to him and smile and tell Elena that she's so lucky to have him, calling her "Caroline" without even thinking about it and then turning and walking away.

He just smiles apologetically, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment when Elena turns to him with a raised eyebrow. "Next time I'll wear long sleeves."

She just turns away in amusement and orders a latte. (Caroline would have ordered it nonfat, vampire metabolism be damned.) They walk along the streets of Rome, talking and laughing, and he thinks in the back of his mind that Caroline hardly ever even left the state of Virginia.

_I should have shown her the world. She should have had a chance to see everything: the beauty, the pain, the horror, the perfection. She should have had it all, and she barely had a fleeting moment._

Elena squeezes his hand tighter, fingers interlaced, and he forces a smile as she pokes her tongue out at him. She lets go in order to sip her latte as they pass the Colosseum and remarks something about the beauty of the architecture and how lions ate gladiators in there once.

He smiles and agrees wordlessly, but instead inside he's thinking, _Caroline would have loved it here._

He rubs the tattoo without thinking about it—it's become a sort of habit, one that Elena has pointed out once or twice but never demanded an explanation for because she understands how you can miss something more than you ever thought you would or could, how you can miss someone more than you understand when you barely even knew them at all—and watches Elena dance on the sidewalk of Rome, sipping her latte and laughing.

Blonde curls and sweet blue eyes come to mind, a girl dancing in the rain of Mystic Falls and running past him, faster and faster, to reach the bunny or the fawn first. Yelling at him for making her eat Bambi and smiling as he knocked on her window after a long, hard day. Falling asleep on his shoulder and letting her hold him at the carnival. Promising to help him with control and turning gray as she died. Lying still as could be as he arrives too late and tries not to cry.

_Caroline._

Leaves swirl around him, red and announcing autumn loudly and brightly, not to be ignored. He smells cinnamon in the air and the caramel in Elena's coffee. Everything looks crystal clear and beautiful. He knows she could have seen this, would have loved this, should have known this. He knows she didn't get the chance to do any of it. To accomplish her dreams. To discover beauty and knowledge and haunting memories.

He traces the letters of the tattoo harder and turns his eyes away, knowing that he'll see her no matter where he looks. She's branded on him and in him, in more ways than one. Eight letters that define his past and present and future, and Elena's smile is dimmed with the knowledge that he's no longer just hers.

He'll always be Caroline's now too.

_Caroline. I'm sorry I broke my promise._

He thinks that thought every day, and never gets an answer. He's not Jeremy, he'll never see her ghost or get to hear her forgiveness (he knows she would have forgiven him, she would have laughed it off and shown him the best in him like she did for everyone) and he'll never get his happiness back.

No, all he gets to have is memories and Elena's caramel lips (not cherries) and eight letters seared into his arm. They belong all over his body, defining him and breaking him and healing him all at once. He doesn't even know her middle name—asking Elena feels like a bad idea; she would get curious and he would get defensive and it wouldn't solve anything—but she's such a part of him, even (and especially) in death. She's all that matters.

_Caroline._

They go to Paris next. And he knows she would have loved it there, too.

* * *

A/N: What was that? No, seriously. What the hell was that? Sure, I ship Stefan and Caroline (I ship Caroline with anything that _breathes_, Candice Accola has AMAZING chemistry with everyone and everything, I swear to God) but I've never really written a fic for them before. And it wasn't...it wasn't romantic or anything! No, I mean, it was, but usually when I write romantic I got freaking all-out. We get kisses and stuff. But in this they didn't even kiss! (Though God knows he wanted to, and we all secretly know she wanted it, too.)

So what does this tell you? That I have way too much time on my hand. Yup, that's it. That's the message right here, folks. I am an insomniac and I have no other time occupiers. I need a life. Instead, I have Steroline and coffee.

Also: I LOVE Paul Wesley's tattoo. It's just beautiful. I had to mention it, just once.

Review? :)


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